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This article examines the sociology-aesthetics nexus in Georg Simmel's thought. The article suggests that it is useful to divide Simmel's linking of sociology and aesthetics into three distinct types of propositions: ( 1) claims regarding the parallels between art and social form (the "art of social forms" ) ; (2) statements regarding principles of sociological ordering in art and aesthetic objects (the "social forms of art"); and (3) analytical propositions where aesthetic and social factors are shown to work in combination. In the latter case, the sociology-aesthetic nexus moves beyond mere analogy. It is argued that in those instances where Simmel shows that aesthetic factors are central to the social bond the linking of aesthetics and sociology is theoretically most insightful.
Western social theory, since Plato, has harbored a suspicion toward aesthetics and aesthetic approaches to social life. The aesthetic has often been seen as the realm of the irrational and the nondiscursive, as privileging individualism and relativistic attitudes to the world. After all, how can art and aesthetics be of service to social theory when these spheres of human activity tend to revolve around questionable concepts, such as the idea of "genius" and the highly subjective notion of "taste?" What benefit is aesthetics to sociologists, if aesthetics, as claimed by one of its strongest critics, is predicated on "a denied social relationship" (Bourdieu 1986:491)?
One of the few classical sociological theorists to avoid the sociological suspicion toward aesthetics was Georg Simmel. As early as 1896, in an essay entitled "Sociological Aesthetics," Simmel (1968:74) boldly declares: "The social question ... is not only an ethical question, but also an aesthetic one." Simmel not only wrote essays on a variety of aesthetic topics ranging from art history to the cultural aspects of modern everyday life, he also countenanced the possibility that the aestheticization and stylization of social forms is what makes social arrangements binding and effective. In Simmel's sociology, the parallels between social and aesthetic forms are at times so strong that one is left with the impression that aesthetic factors actually strengthen the social bond.
In this article, I examine the relationship between sociology and aesthetics - what I term the sociology-aesthetics nexus - in Simmel's thought through three distinct frames: firstly, situations...